Trying to Get Beyond the Rejection Letter.

Remember how I wrote that blog a couple of days ago about the iPad? I think I might be about to become a hypocrite.

Yet, in my defense, I won't be e-reading, I'll just be e-selling.

As a writer, I've learned that trying to get a novel published is a little like stumbling out into the cold, blustery wilderness of the North pole and hoping someone rescues you. Or, more realistically, it's like being forced to watch Ice Road Truckers with your dad and knowing that it's more than likely that one of the truckers might slide out and plunge into the lake, freezing to death before they can drown.

Either way, you get the idea. Trying to break into publishing is pretty impossible.

It's hard to admit. In truth, I'm an idealist. I see the way things should be versus the way they actually are. I see the fact that I've written a light, funny, timely fictional novel that would probably not cost much to promote or produce and I think, "Why would an agent/publisher NOT want to take a chance on this?"

Yet then I get a few rejections and I realize that my idealistic approach is not going to cut it.

The thing is, I have a feeling if people could actually read my novel, The Reluctant Demon, they might enjoy it. In my horrible way of paraphrasing, it's True Blood meets Paranormal Activity (the horribly, slightly creepy movie that killed at the box office around Halloween."

In truth, it's a dark comedy with elements of horror and romance thrown in.

So far, agents feel that "it's not for them."

I wouldn't feel bad except I've now accomplished a grand total of writing nine novels. While I get that some of my novels are hard sells, there's NINE of them. Dear agents: give me a chance. I can write. I can write fast. When I write fast, I write well. In short, I might not have sparkly vampires or DaVinci type code-breaking characters but I have fun.

Yet, what I'm finding in my research is that agents recieve up to 200 queries a day. Of those 200, less than 1% is likely to get more than a kind "Thanks for submitting, good luck" email."

I appreciate the kindness. It's not quite the same as "I loved your premise, let me read more."

My bitterness is probably a little hard to hide. It's a world in which Stephanie Meyer can get an agent to pay attention to her novel because her good friend is also represented by that agent. Stephanie Meyer, gets a read. The rest of us...don't. Long story short, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series becomes a blockbuster.

Score one for Stephanie. Score nil for the rest of us writers who don't know anyone.

So, here I sit. Nine novels later. Not having got anywhere with any one of those novels is really making me feel quite pathetic. Are they all really so bad that no agent will even look at them?

The pessimist/low self-esteem holder in me says "yes." The realist says, "But they haven't even read them!"

It's all about the query letter. Let me tell you, I've sent out a very large amount of them and nothing seems to work. I've tried funny queries, serious queries, quirky queries, attention getters. I've googled "successful query letters" and read ones that have managed to get their writers an agent. I have taken that successful query and modeled my own exactly after it.

Nothing. It's as though I'm beating my head against a wall. I think it's because you're supposed to give your writing credentials, what experience do I have? The sad fact of the matter is that I don't have much. I have nine novels. If I tell them that, I feel like they're going to chuck the letter aside and say, "nine novels, no agent/publisher? Obviously SHE sucks."

No, I don't think I do. It's just I can't get an agent to read my novel. You can't get published without an agent. You can't get an agent without being published. Catch-22.

In all honesty, as a writer, I don't want to get published for money. All I really want is someont to read my book, enjoy it and pass the word. I want people to enjoy my fiction, it doesn't have to change the world. It just has to take the readers out of it for a little while.

I used to think I needed an agent to do this. Today, however, a simple suggestion from a coworker has me thinking. I'm thinking trying out my novel in an e-book format might be worth looking into to see if it's for me.

I did look into it. You know what? The Kindle publishing industry is doing well. Apparently, if you publish your books for a low price, people will read it. They might not like it but they WILL read it.

With The Kindle as well as the Barnes and Noble Nook, my book will be displayed in a highly readable format, making it simple to publish to the Kindle as well as the Nook.

Ironically, agents say that if its on the Nook/Kindle/Sony e-reader, it's out of their hands. They can't represent an author who has been published, even if it is on The Nook.

To this, I say, poo-ey. As 'an author', I know whatever I've written might be bad. It might imply that I can't 'get' an agent.

Sadly, that seems to be true. I can't get an agent. They just don't want to take a risk on new, unpublished writers who aren't guaranteed success.

Agents/publishers are shy. They're really looking for that one author who can quickly sell them a half a billions' worth of stuff. They're not looking for a someone who cares enough to publish a few sample chapters. They want someone who can produce.

So, I think this Kindle thing might be worth looking into. Take the power from the agents and try it myself. I think that many of the agents' protestations about e-books are out of fear: If we can publish ourselves, why do we need them?

I don't know what people are reading. I don't know if my work will do well with e-readers. I only hope people are looking for something new and different. I'd like to think that I'm new and different. If not, well, I hope that people try to enjoy my book anyway. It's intended to be funny and quirky. Enough said.

What I do hope is that they enjoy my book, that they enjoy my characters and storyline. I have a feeling they will

In my wildest glass-half-full moments, I would love to publish on the Kindle and find that an agent is waiting there, in the wings, to snap me up.

The realist in me knows I'll be lucky if you make a penny.


Still...I havthink I'll give it a go.

Happy Thursday!

Sunny Days and Carrot Seeds

It's Friday. It's an unbelievably amazing spring day out there, already nearing seventy degrees. The sun is shining, the air smells heavenly...how can anyone possibly be in a bad mood?

I can't be. Not today. It's too nice out there. I slept really well. I have a cup of coffee. For now, all is right in the world, at least for the fifteen minutes I'm currently living. Baby steps, right?

I'm not going to vent anymore about my bad review. Just as always is the case, whenever I'm having a hard time with that, the people who care about me most came through, lending me their shoulders to cry on, the ears to yell into and their unwavering faith that someday, I'll show those idiots at Publishers Weekly that they were wrong. Also, they're all boycotting Amazon.com which is a rather sweet touch, I think. I know I'm considering doing all my shopping with Barnes and Noble and Borders. Same books, same prices...instant gratification because there is actually a store to browse...there's a lot to be said for that.

So, I'm going to start my weekend feeling upbeat. It's supposed to be fantastic weather all weekend which makes me happy because I can help work in my parent's garden. I'm also going to garage sales tomorrow with my sister. It's a city-wide garage sale day in my parent's hometown. My sister's a pro at those. I've never had much luck; I always feel a little weird perusing people's stuff. However, before I moved from L.A., my roommate and I had our own yard sale. It wasn't exactly a rip-roaring success but it did make me realize that people having yard/garage sales don't mind people pawing through their stuff...they just want them to buy things. So, I'm going to happily peruse. I'm hoping for some kitchen bargains. You never know. There are an awful lot of gifts out there that people don't know what to do with so I'm hoping to run into some hidden bargains. My sister and her husband are always finding things like garage door openers for $3 or kids clothes for fifty cents. It should be fun.

I went house hunting again last night. I think I found a place. It needs a little modernizing and personalizing and even some updating but, overall, it's a bargain and it has the loveliest yard. It's in a quiet neighbourhood that is walking distance from a big park. There are woods behind the house that I would be able to cut through to get to the park. I'm hoping to find out more about it but it was one of those finds that...just felt right.

So, again, I'm trying to emphasize the positive in my life and ignore the negative. I had my wallow. I had my vent. It's time to move on. I have a new idea for writing; I'm taking a temporary break from the novel on which I'm currently working. Until I can figure out what shape my ABNA book is really in since my feedback is so conflicting, I don't feel confident or even comfortable writing a new novel that features one of the same characters. He doesn't mind too much. He may even feature in the new idea I have which might be a lighter, sunnier effort than I usually write.

Regardless of what happens with that, the most important thing is that the ideas are still flowing through me, my characters still whisper in my ears. A bad review didn't stop any of that but, rather, had the opposite effect for which it was intended. It makes me WANT to write, to say "screw you!" to the the world of negativity from which reviews like mine arose.

My good friend and former roommate recently gave me a kids book called The Carrot Seed. It's about a little boy who plants a seed that everyone says will not grow. He watches it for a long time and nothing happens. Everyone tells him to give up. Then, one day, the carrot seed DOES grow because the little boy never gave up on it. She gave me the book to remind me that no matter how many people naysay my writing, one day, it WILL grow. I keep that book on my desk when I write. I read it the other night after I got my review. I love that book. I love my friend for giving me that book. It's a simple lesson but one that is important to remind ourselves during every step of life: Don't give up on something you believe in because, eventually, your faith and belief will pay off.

So, with that in my mind and the sunny weekend looming ahead, life feels good. I've now had a good half-an-hour of good, peaceful, sunny calm and I know that more is ahead. I hope it is for you too.

Happy Friday.

Three Days to ABNA Quarterfinals

It's Friday, a Friday the 13th to be exact. I didn't realize that it was Friday the 13th until I heard it on the radio. We had one of those last month. It turned out to be a rather lucky day because that was the day I found out that I wasn't going to lose my job as I had feared.

I'm hoping that today might be a lucky day too though I'll have to wait to see how the day unfolds. I know on Monday I'm going to try to focus greatly on not stressing about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. The semi-finalists are supposed to be notified on Monday. I don't want to care, I don't want to stress and yet a teeny-tiny part of me is hoping that I at least made the quarter-final rounds.

I hadn't been on the forums on the ABNA site for a while so I went on yesterday, just to see what was happening. One of the entrants in the contest is also an Amazon reviewer (known as Vine reviewers) and though she can't review any of the ABNA entries this year because of conflict of interest, she still has access to the reviewer forums. Yesterday, she was kind enough to post just a few of the comments that had been made by the Vine reviewers who are judging the ABNA entries. I thought it was nice of her. She made a point of saying it was only about 10% of the reviewer's opinions but the forum exploded in a mess of stress and panic anyway. Apparently, the Vine reviewers were fed up of first-person narratives and stories, women finding themselves after a midlife crisis and stories that were filled with profanity and bad language.

As is natural, the commentors on the forum began defending their own use of first-person narrative. They began to argue whether it was ok to use bad language in writing. They began to offer up examples of successful novels that defied what the Vine reviewers had said. I can't say I can't relate: The first thing I did when I read the Vine reviewer's comments was to mentally run through my novel and remind myself that I tend to write in third-person as a rule. I hadn't written a book about a women in a midlife crisis. I probably used a little profanity but only because that's how my character's talk. They're 20-30 something males who've had rather unhappy lives, they're going to say some bad words once in a while.

However, had I chosen to do any of those things in my novel that the Vine reviewers hadn't liked, I'm not sure that I would be one of those people stressing and getting defensive in the forums. Firstly, I tend to lurk and not post because of the constant thread hijacking, because I'm not fond of cliques because I find them a tad off-putting and intimidating and mostly because after my humbling experience last year, I am a little shy because there are some semi-professional writers in there who are way more experienced than me. Yet the main reason is as the initial generous poster said, it was only about 10% of the reviewers. For all we know, the other 90% of those Vine reviewers might have hated third person narratives, fantasy books, romances....any of the myriad of other things that weren't mentioned in the original post.

But I can't make fun of those people because I do understand them. We're getting close to the wire. It's like when you're waiting for an event to start, something you're so excited about that you've barely been able to wait. It's like you're waiting for something, anything to happen on that stage in front of you so that the waiting is over. A backstage worker comes out to adjust something and the whole house goes quiet for a second wondering if things are finally going to start. Warm-up music filters over the waiting audience and for a moment, you wonder if it means things have begun. Everything is something to get excited about because it's the only way to deal with the waiting. Yet it has been my experience that the event is always worth waiting for and when the lights finally do go down and the band or show begins to play, you'll know when it's happening and suddenly all that tension and excitement seems so worth it.

At least that's what I'm hoping on Monday evening. If not, well, I'll keep trying. One thing I've learned after my last brush with rejection is that I need to stop dwelling on those and write anyway. Whether short story, helping with a research paper on Machiavelli or a new idea for a novel, as long as I can find enjoyment from putting down words on paper, I think that means I've already won. When those words start flowing and I don't have to think, there's nothing like it in the world. Maybe it's not really about winning contests or getting published. Maybe the big event is the excitement of letting my passion for writing out, to weave the stories they find as they leave my brain and hit the paper. Whether it is or not, I like the idea anyway so that's what I'm going to believe, no matter what happens with the ABNA contest.

Happy Friday!

ABNA: Oh, the Drama!

So, being the middle of the week, I have nothing specific in my mind to blog about again. I suppose I should plan these things a little better but, at the same time, the randomness of just writing is actually quite fun. Thus, as long as you don't mind, I'll continue to muse about whatever strikes me.

Not too much is going on with me at the moment which is probably for the best. I did get one more rejection since the crippling one from last week but the generic language was actually a comfort when I compared it to the specific critique/criticism from the previous rejection. In a little under two weeks, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) will move onto the next stage and up to 9,500 of us will be rejected. I'm trying to be an optimist and hope that I did, at least, make it to the top 2,000 contestants. This year, the quarterfinalists aren't notified the way they were last year; Amazon won't notify anyone until the top 500 semi-finalists have been selected. If we made the first cut, we'll have access to our message box or something on Createspace, the print-on-demand company that co-sponsors the contest. I'd like to make that cut at least but having read a few of the excerpts, this year there are a lot of good writers in there and there's a lot of competiton.

However, even if I don't make it through, it's been an interesting experience this year just lurking and occasionally posting in the forums. Over the past week, it has been a little less civilized and a little more "America's Next Top Writer". For anyone who's never watched "America's Next Top Model" or the UK version, the show takes twelve somewhat plain girls and turns them into Tyra Banks' version of supermodels. In the beginning, the contestants get along, sweetly attempting to be friends and playing nice for the cameras. There is always one girl who doesn't want to play nice with others because she's "In it to win it!" As the show progresses and the number of models gets narrowed down after a weekly elimination, the true colours of the girls start coming out. I know it's all made far more dramatic for the camera but, trust me, you cannot put a bunch of competitive girls in a house and expect them to play nice forever. I've had roommates, good ones and bad ones. No matter how much you love them, you will fight.

The Amazon Breakthough Novel Award message boards (or forums, whichever term you prefer) have started to deteriorate into catfights. I must confess, it's actually quite interesting to lurk. After all, these are writers and the way they fight/verbally spar/insult each other is always rather clever. It makes for good reading.

I'm not sure I know exactly what happened on the boards but I've managed to figure out that someone posted about the cliques on the board. I must confess, I, too, have been board to tears with these cliques. I won't name names but there's a group of about 10-15 posters who know each other from last year. I admire their camraderie but it gets to be rather obnoxious. For example, I posted in a forum that was discussing the hard process of getting published and how it sometimes makes you doubt yourself. It was a good discussion. Then one of the 'clique' joined in and it became a series of about 30 posts where they were all going to get "Nekkid" with one another. I'm sure it was hilarious but it pretty much ended the discussion. I've seen it happen on countless other forums. I'm not jealous of the camraderie but part of me wishes they'd just stick to the countless discussion threads they've created that are inside jokes to the clique and stay off the serious discussion unless they have something of value to say.

The clique isn't unwelcoming but they are hard to interrupt. Once the group starts a series of 'sillyness' in the thread, the thread loses its luster and few people get to contribute. There are some brave souls who push through but I can't be bothered. Now I just scan the thread headings, see if there's anything of interest and leave.

Back to the drama of the forums. After this initial discussion of the clique, it started to get a little bitter. Sides were defined. The side that favoured the "cliques" and the side that was anti-clique. Needless to say, it got a little heated. It was almost a war. I haven't looked this morning but it was still going on last night. Writers can be rather sarcastic. They can be rather mean. Several regular posters have attempted to make peace, to start new discussions that are not snarky exchanges about secret identities and what-not. Unfortunately, these discussions are being replaced by flaming posts that are the equivalent of using rocket-launchers during hand-to-hand combat. I'm all for freedom of speech but I think maybe it would be good to have a moderator on the boards once in a while, not a just kindly poster whose peacemaking attempts are flattened by by a train of defensive attempts to state 'the truth'.

However, from an outsider's point of view, it's the literary equivelent of watching the Jerry Springer show only with far better grammer and less chairs being thrown. Though given some of the barbs I've read, these are the verbal equivelent of chairs being thrown.

I admire the creativity I'm seeing here. I can't help but wonder if it could possibly be channeled into something a little more useful like, say, a new novel but, at the same time, people are getting a little antsy about the upcoming eliminations and this is the manifestation of their stress. As a lurker, I'm not going to choose sides but I will say it's not black and white. I do find it fascinating that the proxy ringleader of the 'anti-clique' side is making such a huge deal about his identity. He/she goes by the name R.E.Cluse and is adamant that he wants anonymity. It's started a guessing game as to whether this R.E.Cluse is actually someone well known. Personally, I think he/she is just another hopeful like us, a decent writer but someone who is loving the attention and the chance to grandstand in the forums. He/she even posted an excert for everyone to read about someone who's having a bad experience in an online forum. It's decently written but it's a little too personal. As writers, it's extremely tempting to want to eviscerate our enemies, those who've wronged us in fiction. Creating thinly veiled characters based on these people is easy and it's therapeutic. However, after you do it, a few months later, you feel guilty or the piece has lost its meaning. The heat of the moment is good for writing but it shouldn't be something so personal that it can hurt someone. I prefer to use that kind of energy and passion to create something new, something unrelated to that which has riled me up. Angry writing can be the best writing of all but there's a fine line between literary therapy and slander.

I don't have a clue what will happen on March 16th. If I get the elusive email that says I've made it through, I'll be ecstatic. And, if not, I'm going to treat it as an experience. After all, I have written enough novels that I could actually choose which to submit. I suppose I was brave enough to put my work out there. These are things to be excited about.

Regardless of what type of email I do get, I will say thank you to all the other entrants for keeping me entertained on the forums. While some of you are a little scary, you're also providing entertainment which, as writers, you're supposed to do. You writing is getting out there, people are reading it though I think, perhaps, it might not be what you had in mind. Nevertheless, I say Fight on, people. Fight on!

Happy Wednesday

Monday Musings...

It is a universal truth that few people enjoy Monday mornings. At least, I'm sure it is. I did make that up though. I'm not a fan myself. No matter how nice the weekend was, I greedily want it to last just a day longer.

Today, it's a chilly Monday morning. The temperature gauge on my car is hanging around 13 degrees farenheit. Needless to say, it's a wee bit nippy. The sun is shining though which means it'll look warm, even if it feels like the inside of a meat locker. However, compared to my friends in the Northeast who appear to be have hit with a massive winter storm, I won't complain. We've had a few of those and while I'm enamored with almost every flake of snow that falls, it's also nice to have the promise of spring creeping up slowly.

I went to visit my parents this weekend which was a nice treat. Due to the trials and tribulations that I experienced with the DMV, I've been unable to drive for fear of getting arrested. So it was nice to head home for the weekend. I wanted it to be one of those relaxing weekends where I can nurse my battered ego and feel refreshed. It didn't start quite as relaxingly as I'd planned; I left work a little early only to get an urgent text about 30 minutes into my drive telling me to call in for a staff meeting. So I get to spend the rest of my 2 hour drive listening to a meeting on the phone. It was interesting and all and I really am glad I heard the information but I had planned on listening to a playlist on my iPod I'd burned. Being at work, even virtually, when driving, is not a good way to unwind.

Still, I can't complain. The rest of my weekend was exactly what I needed though. Sometimes all it takes is a few hours of just being with my mum. Sometimes it's just a trip to Walmart, sometimes we actually do other stuff. This weekend, we went wandering around a big antique shop. It's one of those converted house-type places where there are a ton of nooks and crannies, all of them full of stuff. It's fun to imagine the history behind some of the things you see. For example, there was an old photo album handwritten with the date "1891". It was during the time period when photographs were always posed and shot by professional photographers so rather than a captured moments, slices of life, each photo was a portrait. It was amazing to see, to wonder who those people were, where they went, who the babies became and how, exactly the photo album came to be in this antique mall. I love looking at things like that. Some of the antiques baffle me; there are old spice tins that are the same as the ones you buy in the store today, old hats that are so motheaten they're almost moving. Yet for each piece of junk, there's a treasure. I never buy anything but it's fun to look.

So, by the time I left on Sunday, I felt significantly less blue and downcast about the harsh rejection I received and a little better about life. Every time I get rejected, I tell myself that the next time, it won't bother me, that just because the rejector doesn't get my writing, doesn't mean it's bad. Yet...every time, I'm thrown into that dizzying spiral of self-doubt. I'm going to try, once more, to ignore the rejection, to concentrate on the feeling I get when I am writing. I'm going to try to write without thinking of needing an agent, without thinking of who might publish my story and when it would happen. I'm just going to write because that's all I can do.

In the meantime, I just want to say thank you to all my readers who believe in me, who've made me realize that I can't not write. It is who I am, for better or for worse and I will keep writing, even if it turns out to be utter crap. I'm going to look forward, not look back at the road paved with rejection and think that somewhere, along the road that lies ahead, there's a success story just waiting for me.

Happy Monday.

A Dark and Stormy Night...

I am so ridiculously glad it's Friday. It's been a long and strange week, one that I'm actually glad is going to be over. It started cold with snow and ice covering the ground and has ended almost springlike, warm temperatures taking me by the surprise.

I love the seasons. As I've said before, it's one of the reasons I'm happy to be back in the Midwest. Southern California has its beauty and if you like sunshine, it's a great place to live. Yet, if you're like me and you enjoy changing temperatures, vast differences in weather from day to day, it can get old really fast.

Not that Los Angeles doesn't have some weather. This is the time of year when the rains come and the city is drowning under heavy torrents. The streets flood, the water rushing with a furious current to the storm drains. Days like that remind me of Stephen King's novel/mini-series It ; I always half expected Pennywise the Clown to be peeking back at me from the grates under the street curbs. It's probably better that he doesn't. While I enjoy my active imagination and picturing Mr. Pennywise the Creepy Clown, actually seeing him would either completely terrify me or, instead, confirm that I am actually crazy instead of being a slight suspicion in the back of my mind. As you can imagine, neither alternative would be a good thing.

We had thunderstorms last night with the type of lashing rain that beats against the windows so hard that you feel like they're going to shatter. The wind howled through the tiny cracks between window and frame and the thunder rumbled in the distance. It was the type of night that made me glad to be inside yet a small part of me wondered how it would feel to be out in the night, the wind whipping my hair, the rain pelting me and soaking my face. The best part of being out in it is coming in. I love the feeling of changing out of wet clothes into try ones; clothes never quite feel as good as that moment unless they're coming straight from the clothes dryer. To me, that is a small slice of heaven.

I lay awake for a lot of the night. I had a lot on my mind which is probably why I woke up in the first place. Unfortunately, my upstairs neighbours- they whom have disturbed my peace before- were apparently having quite a raucous videogame party. Right above my room. They like to celebrate when they beat each other at the game up there. Trust me, I heard every word. Because I was in that mental place where I wasn't asleep yet wasn't fully coherant and awake, I didn't really know what to do. Trying to be fair, it's not their fault that the walls and ceilings of our apartment complex are thin. They really weren't being that loud but, because they were right above my head, I could still hear them. Of course, one might wonder why, at 4:30 a.m., they're STILL playing videogames but not everyone works 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. like me so maybe they don't get that some people do tend to sleep during the night.

The nice part about the storm was that it was a little noise blocker. The rain fell so heavily and the wind blew so furiously that it drowned them out and, eventually, lulled me back to sleep. I look forward to spring and summer because that's when the truly spectacular storms arrive. The only part that is a little worrying is the fear of tornandos. We have no basement in my building. I'm not quite sure where to go if we do have a tornado. Yet there's no point in worrying about that until it's time.

I'm glad it's the weekend. I'm going to visit my family which is always a good way to relax. I'm hoping to get a little more of my optimism back, to back up a little and not let the jading burn of rejection get to me so much. It should be about the love of writing more than the appreciation of it. I need to remember that because that's why I started writing in the first place. Hopefully next week, my spirits will be renewed and my positivity will return. Thanks, as always for reading.

Have a great weekend.

Drowning in the Undertow of Rejection....

So, last week, I promised that I'd be more more positive this week. Unfortunately, given that my DMV rants aren't exactly a beacon of positive energy, I think I may have been a bit premature in my promise. Especially as today, I have a feeling I might be a little less than positive.

I got a rejection last night. When I saw it in my email box, it didn't phase me because though I knew it was rejection, I'd honestly forgotten I'd even submitted to the publication and thus, clearly didn't hold much stock in it.

Then I opened it. It was for a literary magazine that has a rather nice policy of having several reviewers read submissions, supposedly 'blindly' and then when you get rejected/accepted, you get to see their comments. I've never had this before. I had entered a short story of which I was proud. It was more literary than my usual efforts. Granted, it hadn't taken me too long to write but then, my best stuff never does.

The first comment was overwhelmingly positive. The rest...well, let's just say that by the time I was done reading, I wanted to cry. I know it's all supposed to be constructive criticism but it wasn't constructive at all. It made me feel like a complete amateur, as though I didn't know what I was doing. It picked on my writing, said it was stiff, that my word choices didn't suit the reviewer, that they thought the subject was silly. The piece I was written was supposed to be slightly quirky, slightly poignant, slightly wistful. Apparently, it was none of these things. The things that were criticized were intentional. I was told "It was too ethereal, too dreamy, too much in the character's head". Well, oddly enough, the piece was a story about a man in a coma and the odd places his mind took him, places connected with his life. It was actually based on a friend's memories from a three-week coma in which she had been trapped. By the time I was done reading the comments, I felt as though I'd been beaten, bruised with the might of a thousand critical words.

The problem with getting emails like this is I think about them too much. They force me to take stock of my life and that's not such a pretty thing when I think about my writing. I've written novels. I've written short stories. I haven't had any luck getting anything published. I get rejection after rejection. The people who read my stuff like it but they're usually people I know, people who's opinions I value until I step back and think too hard about it and then I start wondering if they feel obligated to be nice about my writing.

In truth, I'm feeling a little like a failure again. I know it shouldn't matter. I've said before in my blog that I love to write. I do. That counts for something, I know. Yet I have this horrid fear that like one of those kids who audition for American Idol, kids who've been told their whole lives by their loved ones that they should be a professional singer. Yet, when they get their chance, they reveal that they're actually terrible, that they have no talent at all.

It's crushing. I don't have much to show for my writing career except a few finished products, a couple of articles published in an online magazine and a stack of rejection letters. The best use of my writing is for academic papers for friends. They give me an outline, I turn it into a paper. That's the extent of my whole writing existence.

I want it to be so much more. I've always said before that I'll appreciate it more when I do have success but the whole process is so brutal that I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be able to make it to that point. Apparently what I think is good writing isn't, it's merely mediocre. It's times like this when I feel that my grip on my dream of being a published writer is precarious at best. I'm not fond of clichés , but I'm forced to think of the one of the tree falling in the forest and nobody hearing it; does it still make a sound? As a writer, if I write a novel and nobody reads it, am I still a writer or just someone who puts words on a page?

So much for being more positive. I apologize profusely for being a huge downer. Yet part of the reason I started this blog was to deal with the ups and downs of trying to be a writer. Today, it's a down, one that's so low that I'm wondering how I'll get back out of it. I know criticism is supposed to help but it stings. Eventually I'll probably be able to read it and learn from it. For now, I'm not at the point. In all honesty, the process is beating me down and I can't seem to find that passion for writing that usually floods through me. It's drowning in a pool of negativity.

I have to get out of it but I'm not quite sure how. I can't keep asking my friends and family to be my pep squad; I've already had a couple of friends hint that maybe if it's this hard, I should give up which never helps my fragile self-esteem because then I start to believe that they secretely think I'm a bad writer and they've only been supporting me because they feel like they have to. It's a downward spiral. I keep waiting for something to grab onto, something to give me a little hope but everytime I put myself out there, I just end up spiraling even further down. Does there get to a point in which you've hit rock bottom and there's no way up, that I just have to accept that I'm deluding myself?

I don't know. I don't want to think that. I think if I did, I probably wouldn't be trying to rationalize it in a blog, a place where I am, in fact, still writing. I'm going to try to keep going because, in all honesty, I'm not sure what else to do.

Then I remember that I have this quote from a calendar pinned to my message board and I pinned it up for times like these. It goes:

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that say's I'll try again tomorrow." - Mary Anne Radmacher.

When I read this quote, I tell myself that what I'm doing is really courageous, that by constantly trying, I'm still accomplishing something. As long as I remind myself to try again tomorrow, I haven't given up, that tomorrow, I'll find that glow that a good day of writing gives me because I do believe it's still inside me, no matter how many rejections try to kill it.

I will try again tomorrow because that's all I can do.

Happy Thursday.

Life Gets in the Way Sometimes....

Today is one of those days where I have no clue what to blog about. Life has been so stressful lately that it's hard to step back and realize that now that I know I have a job, I can relax. It's never easy to command yourself to relax, though. There's always something to worry you.

For me, it's my writing. I haven't written anything new in a while. I've been editing for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). That was pretty fun but once I was done, I was done. I've been lurking on the boards and there are some people out there who are nuts about editing. Even after they'd submitted their entry, they were tweaking until the final deadline. Some people even want to know if the contest administrator's can open up the process again once finalists have been selected so they can tweak a little.

Personally, I have a bit of an issue with this. I know the contest is for new writers, unpublished writers, writers who haven't had luck with traditional routes of publishing. I know that the desire to have a perfect novel is driving, it's demanding, it can obsess you. No novel will ever be perfect though some have come close. I know the need to edit can be strong. Yet, at some point, you have to stop. Like any other submission whether it be to agent, publisher or magazine, you're supposed to submit your best effort. You don't submit to a magazine and say, "oh, hey, I rewrote this section of my story, I'd like to submit it again, please", do you? Well, maybe you do but you shouldn't be doing that because chances are the editor will say "why did you bother submitting in the first place if it wasn't your best effort?" and they'll reject you.

I understand that some writers discovered ABNA later and had to quickly submit their manuscripts. That was me last year. I had a week to register, edit and upload. It was a tight deadline but it was the most fun periods of my writing life. Having a deadline is awesome in a way. It makes you feel like a real writer, someone who has to get their work done no matter what and if you don't, you lose out. However, once I was done editing, I was done. My novel probably needed more editing but I had done the best I could. I was proud to submit it. Granted, my experience last year wasn't stellar as I documented here, but I learned and, for a brief time, had some hope.

So I get it. I get why writers can't leave their books alone and can't stop editing but there comes a point when you have to. For me, I've learned that I can't edit when I finish a novel. I have to put it away for a long time, from six months to a year, and then edit. It's easier then. I find the errors, I find the clunky passages, I find the extraneous pop-culture references that would easily date my story and so I take them out. Yet on a cold and heartless note, I can't help but want to say to those constant tweakers and rewriters on the ABNA message boards, if you weren't happy with it, why did you submit it?

Then I have regret at being so mean. After all, not everyone is the same. For me, I can't submit anything I don't fully believe in. I can't submit something that doesn't feel like it's ready. If I did, I'd basically feel like I was throwing my lot in just for the heck of it. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's not a bad option. Yet if that was the option I chose, I'd also try to keep the mindset that whatever happens, happens and if I don't get anywhere then maybe I should have spent more time on the manuscript/story before I threw it out there.

The contest is proving to be an interesting experience, even when I'm just lurking on the message boards. Once again, the forums have been hijacked by the same few people. The people are funny and they have a rapport with each other but it does make it a little intimidating to jump in sometimes. Yet it's still fun to learn about the entrants. They range from complete beginners who shyly post questions on the boards to the more professional writers who can share their stories about bad agents and publishing feats. Last year's winner, Bill Loehfelm is even showing up on the board, always dispensing smart, seasoned advice.

It's fun to read what people have to say. I like to read the advice they give, especially from the writers who have had success. This year, I'm bound and determined not to be mean and snarky. Last year, I read some of the pitches and wondered who on earth would read that book. Then I realized after I got booted out that people probably said that about my pitch. This year, I'm taking everything and trying to learn, to see what I could do better and learn from other writers. That's not easy for me. I don't like to play well with others as I've said before. However, those others have had more success than me, thus they have to be doing something right.

Now I'm done editing, it's a waiting game again. I'm waiting to see if I get booted out again or if maybe, just maybe, my pitch is actually strong enough this year.

In the meantime, I want to write yet...I can't. I've sent out queries and am waiting on those. I made a deal to myself that I wouldn't write another novel until I'd tried hard to sell the ones I have. Yet I haven't. I'm getting nothing back from my queries. I don't know why. I feel paralyzed. Part of me wonders what the point of writing another novel or story is and the other part want to get lost in a new work.

Yet I can't. Not at the moment. And I don't know why. I have ideas but nothing seems worth spending the time on. I should just write through it like I have in the past, push through the block. I've never truly believed in writer's block because there are tricks to getting through it. The block I have right now is my own making. I've let the stress of life get in the way and now it's fixed fast in my path. I need to find a way to ignore it and then the block will go away.

It'll pass. Eventually. In the meantime....I'll just keep waiting, trying and hoping. Wish me luck with that.

Happy Tuesday.

A Simple Lesson from a Squirrel...

It's a gloomy, dark, rainy Tuesday today. The rain started hammering my windows at around 2 a.m. and though it's slowed, I don't think it's really stopped. It's currently drizzling, the clouds deep and heavy. It's also much, much warmer than it has been. It's supposed to be over 60 degrees today. It's very springlike. It's a nice lull from the cold freezing temperatures and blanket of snow and ice.

I don't think this means it's spring though. Not yet. The grass has reappeared now the snow has mostly melted and it's still that dull, tired brown of winter. The newness of spring still waiting to reveal itself. There are also still patches of snow that loom in the shade. They're melting and, as they do so, the cold of the snow collides with the warm of the air and a hazy mist hangs between snow and sky. It looks like something from a fantasy novel, as though you'd step into the snow patch and be taken to an alien place, a world that exists seperate from ours.

Don't you wish, somedays, that you could do that? I have, even since I was a child. I read books about made-up-lands that appeared at the tops of trees, lands that existed on the other side of wardrobes, worlds where vampires existed, brutally and romantically. Even as I'm older, I still like to read books that take me away, books like Harry Potter where magic truly exists. I'm old enough to know it's all fiction but young enough that sometimes I wish it wasn't.

I think the days that it's easiest to wish that are the days where we feel like we're stuck in a rut. For me, it's when my job isn't exciting and I feel that a trained monkey could do it. Sometimes it's a day when I have the hope of romance only to have it dashed by the reality of emotional baggage. It's also days when my email account holds rejections from agents when I was so certain that one of them would at least want to see more of what I can do. It's days when I sit down to write and all that flows is a regurgitated version of someone else's work rather than an original, extraordinary idea of my own.

I'm having one of those days today. As I drove in, I got stuck at a stop light and I watched a squirrel smoothly hope from one side of a telephone wire to the other. It wasn't one of those scary electical wires that threaten to fry the squirrel but one of those bundled packages that hang high above, the casing around the bundle providing a safe passage from squirrels. I admired that squirrel. He had a place to get so he hopped along to it. He didn't falter, he didn't slip, he didn't even seem to be looking where he was going. He just knew. He trusted his feet to get him there and they did. He reached his goal with nary a thought.

Somedays, I wish life was that easy. The path that lays before us never seems quite that easy to find. There's too much in the way, whether it's real obstacles or ones that exist in our mind. So we don't hop forward, boldy, as the squirrel did. We stop and try to keep looking down and though we might see the path, our caution makes it slippery and uncertain. For me, the path is always shrouded in self-doubt: "what if I'm not supposed to do this?" "What if I'm not good enough?" "Why do I always get rejected?" "Why can't it be easy?"

The thing is, I don't think it's supposed to be easy. As I've said in this blog before, it feels more worthwhile when it isn't easy. If I do succeed with writing or life, romance or my job, it'll feel like I earned it. The hardest part is keeping my feet on the path that lays before me, even if I can't see it. I have to just trust that it's there and go with my instincts and, one day, like that squirrel, I'll have achieved my goal, even if it's just staying on a path and getting to the other side because that, in itself, is a prize and accomplishment.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy this rainy Tuesday. We're supposed to have thunderstorms tomorrow. If there's one thing I love almost as much as snow, it's a good, powerful Midwestern storm. There's nothing like it. Considering I used to be terrified of storms, the fact that I revel in them nowadays is an accomplishment. And, the ironic thing is, I never had to think about it. I just let it happen.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned there.

Happy Tuesday.

Grocery Stores, Queries and Bad Days at Work

How come weekdays seem to drag on forever and weekends fly by?

That's my question that I'm putting to the masses today. Last week seemed like the longest week ever at work. It may have been because we're all a little stressed in our office due to the inevitable buyout of our company. We think we should have jobs but no one knows for sure. Combine that with a temporary order that everyone has to dress in business casual for two weeks...and you get a pretty stressed out office.

Not that it's really such a hardship to dress in business casual. I used to have to do it every day. It's amazing how spoiled you get though when you find out you can wear a sweatshirt and jeans to work. Suddenly, it seems like a right, not a privilege. Normally, I enjoy dressing up a little but the minute someone says I have to, I no longer want to. I like being contrary sometimes.

Yet after such a long week, the weekend flew by in a blur. I had dinner with a friend on Friday, dinner with another friend on Saturday and a trip to one of my favourite grocery stores EVER in between. The store is Jungle Jim's International Market and is huge with a fantastic supply of wine, a bakery, the best produce section...ever and, best of all, areas dedicated to groceries from around the world. They have a great British section. It's so wonderful to see the jars of marmite, tins of Heinz beans, cans of Bisto gravy granules just sitting there like it's nothing special. Those things are a staple of any British ex-pat and you wouldn't believe how much you miss them when you can't find them. There are some things that just make life better because they're comforting and most of these things I can find at Jungle Jim's.

The only problem with Jungle Jim's is that I spend too much. I blame the produce section. I tend to get a little batty when surrounded by fresh produce; suddenly everything looks wonderful and I must have it. I tried to restrain myself on Saturday but still came home with a cartful of produce.

Yet it's not also the produce section; it's the bakery and the British section. Going to the grocery store on any given day is fun for me so Jungle Jim's is like going to Disneyland. Needless to say I spent three hours there.

The rest of my weekend was nice. I sent out more queries yesterday. I used the pitch from my Amazon.com entry. It's a good pitch but trying to find an agent even with a good pitch is like trying to catch a bird with a handful of breadcrumbs and a lasso of string: In theory, it's should work but, in reality, it's never as easy to lasso a bird with a piece of string.

Yet I live in hope. If not, I'll do what I normally do: Pound my head against a wall, have a day or two of self-pity in which my friends and mother, wonderful people that they are, tell me that it'll happen one day and not to give up. Then I start again. It's a vicious cycle but a necessary one.

So today begins a new week, hopefully a less stressful one. The snow has melted, the temperature is supposed to be near sixty degrees and it's supposed to be calmer in our office. I'll allow the warmer temperatures for a while but I hope for one more bout of snow before Spring truly arrives.

In the meantime, rejections or not, I'm determined to make this week better just by trying to enjoy life instead of trying to hide from the stress that surrounds me. I have tricks for doing this. I've discovered that the "Bale Out" remix of Christian Bale's on-set rant makes me giggle uncontrollably. Christian Bale is proof that we all have bad days at work, no matter what our job. I feel bad for him that his bad day was recorded. When my day is bad, all I can do is call my poor mother and vent to her. She's a great listener and usually, a good vent session is all I need to make going into the office bearable the next day.

Yet since it's a Monday and I'm trying to be positive, I'm hoping that there are no bad days this week. I'll keep you posted on that.

Happy Monday.

Monday Morning Blues...

What is it about Monday mornings that make it so hard to get going? For example, today it's a grey and snow-dusted Monday, the temperature gauge read 17 degrees and the minute I uncurled myself from my warm and comfortable down comforter, I realized that I'd like nothing more than to get back into my bed.

It never matters how much sleep I get the night before. I could go to bed at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night and wake up at 6:45 a.m. and still not feel like I had enough sleep. Any other night, I'd be fine but Sundays lead to Mondays and that makes them different.

Now it's a Monday morning and I have a strange feeling of uncertainty in the pit of my stomach. I remember having those when I was in school and I had a large test the next day or I'd had a fight with a friend and was nervous to face them in school or, the very worst, a bully had targeted me and wouldn't stop calling me names. As far as the bullies went, that old theory of "they'll leave you alone if you stand up to them," is crap. I tried that. They'd just get meaner. No, the best strategy was to not acknowledge them, to laugh at them and look slightly down your nose at them as they mocked you. They got tired of that quickly and moved on to another vulnerable target. These bullies were rarely violent but they used words to hurt instead, somehow finding the most fragile area of your self-esteem and then attacking. No matter how much you tried to laugh it off and ignore it, the words still did their job, making you doubt, second guess yourself and secretly accept that they were true.

I'm older now and the bullies are much easier to handle. They're usually at work in the form of a coworker or boss who try to use you to get ahead. My strategy with those is to let them; chances are they'll end up shooting themselves in the foot eventually.

On the plus side, we're supposed to have a major snowstorm tonight. If I were going to be a Pootle, I'd worry about the bad roads, of my family having to drive in it. I refuse to be a Pootle though and thus, I'm going to allow myself to get excited about it. We're supposed to get up to 6 inches. I can't wait to see the cascading flakes fall from the clouds and cover the world.

I can feel my mother cringing and curling herself into a ball as she reads this. As I've mentioned, she hates snow. I tried to get her to tell me why and all she says is that "it's cold." I don't get it. Then again, she thinks I'm mental because I love it. I think she should go out and build a snowman and take time to appreciate the uniqueness of a world that's covered with freshly fallen snow. The world is so much more silent like that. Sounds are muffled by the ground covering and the echo of life is much more apparent.

Yet I'm going to choose to be happy about the snow. I was going to write a miserable little blog about how cruddy I feel because I got rejected again, I was going to talk about loss and grief because I lost a friend a year ago.

I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to enable Monday to throw its shadow of simply being over me. Instead, I'm going to wait for the promised snow. I shall enjoy the fact that "24" is on tonight and though poor Jack Bauer's already had six really bad days, he's having another one and I can't help but watch.

So just because it's Monday and I'd much rather be in bed reading, I'm not going to think on that. I'm going to remind myself that I just had two days off already and they were good. I'm going to remind myself that there's another weekend in less than five days.

Now, if only that would work.

Happy Monday.

At Least Let us Sing Before you Boot us off the Stage!

Is it sad that I'm already ready for the weekend? I know I've only been at work for one day this week but I'm really ready for another couple of days off. I don't think that's a reflection of my job but, rather, that I actually stopped to appreciate the slowness of life this past weekend and I don't quite think I'm ready to give it up.

Still, if it were a normal week, it'd only be Tuesday rather than Wednesday so I'm going to try very hard to appreciate that fact today.

Last night, I took a look at my novels to see which one I was going to enter in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. That's the nice thing about having a pile of them; there's several to choose from. My original intention was to enter my favourite one, Rainlight, but I've since realized that chopping out over 14,000 words will not be easy nor will I be satisfied with the finished product. I'd rather keep it as is and try to shop it around. I sent out some more queries on it. Sometimes I do wonder why the agents and publishers make us bother; I get the feeling that the query letters we send are rarely actually read and digested but, instead, are skimmed but when they see we're yet unpublished, we get the badly xeroxed letter or the standard email rejection.

I'd like to believe that it is possible to get an agent to read my letter and the first ten pages I send. That's why I keep trying. I'm not bitter at the moment, just frustrated that this should be so hard when the writing is so easy. I've been told that I should go to conventions to meet agents. I would love to but given that the average entrance fee is at least $300 and I pretty much live paycheck to paycheck trying not to incur more debt, it's not as easy as just signing up for one.

That's not going to stop me though. At the very least, there's the Amazon contest. The nice thing about being a somewhat seasoned writer (even without any publishing credit) is that I have almost everything ready to go. They want a pitch this year- essentially, that boils down to the meat of a query letter. Since I'm the queen of queries, that's the easy part. I have one of the potential novel candidates already edited and ready to go. I might have the other one I'd like to try edited too. The only thing with that is I can't find my hard copy with my edits scrawled across it. I have a sneaking suspicion I loaned that to a friend before I left California but said friend isn't returning my emails or calls to confirm. I think the only thing to do is to hit the manuscript freshly and re-edit, just in case. That's not exactly torture, to spend hours with those characters.

And if I get rejected from Amazon again this year, I will try very hard not to be too depressed, too bitter or too disheartened. I will try not to be jealous of fictional characters who magically send a manuscript to an agent and voila! publishing contract.

(That just happened in that book I mentioned on Friday, The Baker's Apprentice. One of the characters happens to write a memoir/fictional novel and sends it off to an agent. The agent likes it but wants it completely rewritten. Then after the rewrite is done, the writer gets a nice-sized publishing deal.)

I'm sure that happens. However, all the writers I know, including myself, never quite get that chance to completely rewrite the manuscript to change points-of-view and structure. We just get the "thank you for submitting. Unfortunately, we do not feel we are the right agents for your work" email. For us, it's like getting to the auditions for American Idol, filling out our form and being rejected before we're even allowed to sing because we're not pretty enough for TV or we aren't wearing the right clothes.

Ok, so maybe I am a teensy bit bitter. Maybe I'd like the chance to get to 'sing for the judges' before they decide I'm not worthy. Maybe I don't want to be the girl who wears a bikini just to get Simon Cowell's attention or the person who dresses up in a Star Wars costume just to prove I'm unique.

Maybe I, like so many other fledging writers, just want the chance to "sing", to prove that while I might not have a famous name or face, I can write and my novels are worth reading. Then, if I'm rejected, I'll at least feel like I had a fair chance. That's not to much to ask, is it?

Ah well, 'tis all experience. That much I do know. One of these days, my efforts will pay off. Until then, I'll keep dreaming and writing. That's all I can do.

Happy Wednesday.

Shadows of Doubt

I never have a clue what I'm going to blog about until I sit down. I often have a completely different idea in my head and then, when I start writing, something else comes out instead. It's an interesting process. Then again, that's usually what happens when I sit down to write a novel; I start with a basic idea and then it goes in a whole other direction. I wrote a novel called Skater Boy. It was supposed to be a chick-lit romance with comedic tones. It turned into a dark little novel complete with child abuse, rape and the coming of age. I tried to make it light and fun but apparently that didn't work out so well.

I like just writing to see what comes though at times, it's frustrating. There are times when I just don't know what to write and nothing's coming and the flow just isn't there. I don't consider this writer's block at all- just a case of Writer Needs to Do Something Else Right Now. Often that involves watching TV, reading a book or even, when I'm really frustrated, playing on my Playstation 2. I've found that I can't force the writing; if I do, I always end up scrapping it and starting again. It feels forced to me when I read it and I hate that.

Then there's the other extreme: Too many ideas. This does happen. And you'd think it'd be easy to write some of them down and just pick one. This does work. Sometimes. But the worst is when you pick an idea but can't get started so you pick another one. Then you go back to the first idea because the other one isn't working. Sometimes this can happen with as many as three or four ideas. It ends up feeling like a disorganized mess and the only way to get through it is to stick with one of the ideas and push through until it feels natural. That's happening to me at the moment. I haven't written fiction in a while. Moving cross country tends to interrupt your life for a while; there's the packing, the organizing, the cleaning, cramming in as much time with friends as humanly possible and then the actual moving. After the physical move happens comes the unpacking, the myriad of Walmart trips because you realize you gave a lot of really useful stuff to Salvation Army because you just couldn't be bothered to pack any more boxes. This continues for a long time. For example, when you spill wine on your carpet and you no longer have any carpet cleaning supplies. Then you have to make a frantic dash to Kroger to grab some before the carpet is forever ruined.

So, now, finally, it's time for me to start writing. The thing is, lately, it's hard because there's a lot of self-doubt getting in the way of the flow. I mentioned I was sending out query letters to agents. I sent out 15 of them. I've already had 7 rejections. None of them have read my novels, they're rejecting my letter. I suppose that's not quite so personal but it still is extremely frustrating. I've sent out batches of queries for three wildly different novels. I know my letters are well written, they summarize the plot well, follow all the guidelines but they still get rejected. I only send them to agents who represent the type of novel I've written but I inevitably get variations on the one line rejection email "Not for me, I'm afraid."

I don't know anyone in publishing. This is a huge problem. Many of the success stories these days are from writers who either did a writing program and networked that way or they had a friend who had been published and they introduced them. I've thought about writing programs but I'm a new-ish writer. I only figured out I wanted to write professionally after I had been out of college for a couple of years. For a while, I thought I wanted to go to law school. So I worked as a legal secretary. That is an excellent way to realize that being a lawyer is not like you see on TV. Being a lawyer is very boring. Being a legal secretary is also very boring. I decided not to do that. After a lot of jobs, I finally wrote a screenplay and decided I loved it. Then, as I think I've mentioned, I couldn't come up with an ending for one of my scripts so I wrote a novel and that was my Epiphany moment, the moment where I realized that I had to keep writing because it fit.

The problem with MFA writing programs is that they need a lot of stuff. They need letters of recommendation from professionals in the field. I don't know any of those. They also want you to take the GRE which is the graduate version of the SATs. This means I'd have to relearn all of that horrible maths stuff I didn't like in high school. The logical question becomes: WHY do I need to prove I can do math to be a writer? I applied to one writing program and, naturally, got rejected. It took months to round everything up. My letters of recommendation weren't terribly good though I tried hard to find appropriate people to write them. And the truth is, I don't really want to enter a writing program, anyway. I like writing on my own; I hate workshopping my stuff because it makes me think too hard. My 'process' is to just write the novel and then figure out what does or doesn't work. Workshopping means taking scenes out of context, of letting others critique them. How can they critique something that isn't finished yet? It's like trying to judge a painting when it's just a pencil sketch. I know it works for some people but not for me. I need to be left alone with my work, to see where it goes. I never feel like I'm writing a novel, honestly- I'm just 'finding' it and writing it down. It's happened eight times now so I'm pretty sure that method works for me.

Writing workshops also help with writer's block. For me, the only thing that works for writer's blog is to sit down with a character. It sounds nutty but I've gone so far as to 'have lunch' with them, talking to them in my mind, writing down a backstory or anecdotes that don't have anything to do with the novel but tells me who they are. I've done that countless times and it has never failed me.

So, I don't think I really would enjoy a writing program other than the fact I would get to focus on my writing full-time. I just want the contacts I might make from them. I also can't afford it. The same goes for writing conferences or writers retreats; I don't really like the idea of them anyway. I was naive enough when I started to think that my writing was good enough, that I had enough ideas and talent that I'd be ok on my own.

But now I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. I've entered contests, I've written short stories, I've queried publishers and agents....nothing. And so I am filled with doubt. What if I can't write? What if I secretly suck and people are too nice to tell me?

And no matter how much I love writing, how much passion I have when I do so, the doubt creeps in. It taints my ability to get lost in a story, to hear a characters voice because I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. There's this voice in my head constantly saying "what's the point?" The point is that I love doing it and so being successful shouldn't matter but it does. Now that I've written eight novels, it does matter, no matter how much I love it. Each new idea is tinted with that shadow of doubt, the idea that I should concentrate on what I've already written rather than hiding in another work.

I invited agents to look at my blog in my last query letter. That's probably a faux pas but, frankly, I don't really care. I've followed the rules and that got me nowhere. So, I tried something new. Seven down, eight more to go. If only one of them would ask to see part of my novel, that would be something.

In the meantime, I'm making myself write again. It may end up sucking canal water but I'm pushing on and last night, I felt the doubt disappear for a while when I let my character in; I let him tell me what to type instead of forcing it and it felt right. In the end, it's just a question of persevering, of dreaming, of hoping that someone will, in the immortal words of Abba, "Take a Chance on Me."

And, if not, I can always blog some more about snow.

Happy Thursday.

Christmas Trees and the Reflection of Two-Hundred Multi-Coloured Lights

It snowed a little last night. It was the clingy snow that forms clusters on the ground and sticks to your car windshield. It's pretty. Since it is now officially December and thus Christmas season, I have my tree up. It's the first tree I've ever put up by myself. When I moved to L.A., I lived by myself for five years and because I had virtually no money, I made do with decorating my mantel with ornaments and one of those green tinsel garlands that is the same colour as a Christmas tree from the 99 cent store. I twirled lights around the tinsel for effect and it was pretty. As the years went by, I upgraded to a fake pine garland and added some nativities and candles. Since I flew back to the Midwest for Christmas every year, it didn't matter that there was no tree. My little gas fireplace always looked cozy and with the glow of the multi-colour lights that I had wrapped around the garland, it was very festive.

When I moved in with my roommate, she liked real trees and so we would go pick our tree every Christmas and then spend hours in Walmart picking out decorations. That was always fun. I love the smell of a fresh tree, it brings the outside indoors without the inconvenience of mud, ice and, well, the outdoors. I'm not a very outdoorsy person. I don't mind a good hike or a walk but then I'm done. I hate camping. I've really tried to like it. I even went camping with some experts who cooked gourmet food and had all sorts of nifty camping stuff. The company was awesome, the camping was miserable. I hate sleeping outside. I hate that my feet get so cold that nothing warms them. I hate that damp cold that creeps in overnight so when you wake up, you can't escape from it until you crawl outside and practically wrap yourself around the camp fire that the more experienced campers have already set. And though that warms me, I then smell like smoke for the rest of the trip. So, yeah, a real Christmas tree inside my apartment? That's as outdoorsy as I get.

This year, I don't have a real tree. I have my Black Friday Triumph Tree. It's pre-lit so I don't have to worry about wrapping the lights around the branches. I've never been good at that. I've watched other people spend hours and hours individually wrapping each branch with lights. It always looks awesome but during the time the lights are being put on the tree, the would-be decorators eventually lose all hope that they'll get to hang the baubles on the tree at all that day. I was worried my pre-lit tree would be skimpy on lights and I'd have to supplement but after plugging it in, it is beautifully lit with no bare spots.

I hung the ornaments I inherited when I moved. It was a little sad to hang them alone; I remembered picking them with my roommate and choosing the colours carefully. I also hung up my garland that I first bought when I lived alone. My apartment is twinkly and festive and it makes me happy to turn on the lights.

I tried not to be too reflective when I decorated. It has been a tough year, full of loss and change. Christmas is hard that way. While it's full of tidings of comfort and joy, it's also a reminder that life changes, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. The change can be good; I'm still grateful and thrilled that I was able to move so much closer to my family. It's such a treat to drive home and be surrounded by the people that I love, even when we drive each other crazy.

But the change can also be bad. Christmas is a time when the emptiness in our life is a little louder and no matter how many twinkly lights or gift-exchanges you fill it with, it's always there. There's always a gap that can't quite be filled. Christmas is a time when ghosts whisper a little louder, wanting to be remembered and nostalgia grows into something tangible, something that makes your heart break just a little at the most unexpected moments.

Yet Christmas is also the end of the year, a time when all things end, only to begin again. It's a gentle reminder that everything comes full circle. For each year that begins, an ending must follow. It's the in-between part that is tricky. New Years is a time of renewal, of new hope, of resolutions for change. Christmas is a time to reflect and look back. It's a time to celebrate the promise of hope, provided you remember why we have Christmas in the first place. It's a time to spend with loved ones, to honour the spaces that are left unfilled but to not let those gaps overwhelm us.

There's a lot that I miss in my new life. I miss the trip to Target or Home Depot to pick out the tree. I miss laughing and being silly as we decorate the tree. I miss the bickering over whether we should be tasteful (as my roommate preferred) or colourfully tacky (my prefence). We usually compromised and ended up with a pretty cool-looking tree. I'll miss the mini-Christmases I had before I came home for Christmas with my family, the gift exchanges, the laughter, the food. Most of all I'll miss the friends and family I have in California who filled the gap when my own family was too far away and the distance couldn't be bridged with a phone call.

It's been a year full of change, good and bad. It's a year of growing up and realizing that life is too short to waste. Though the new year is still a month away, the inevitable reflection begins in the comfort of 200 multi-coloured lights, blazing away on my $25 pre-lit tree. Though my writing is no further than it was a year ago as far as publishing goes, it's taken leaps and bounds with the subjects I choose and the way in which I write them. The rejection I receive is hard but it's not everything. It depends on how I let it affect me. And so as I lay beneath my Christmas tree and stared up at the lights last night, I decided to enjoy the beauty of life rather than the harshness. The lights, the tree, the snow, the family and the friends, absent and present, all these things make Christmas my favourite time of year.

Happy Tuesday.

Thoughts of Thanksgiving Dance In My Head....

Oh, I am so glad it's Friday today. It's been a long week and I'm not even sure why. It's one of those weeks in which not much has happened which is not a bad thing at all. Maybe it's because it's the week before Thanksgiving. Next week is the Official Start of the Holiday Season.

I'm very much looking forward to Thanksgiving. This is because I love turkey. I love my mother's turkey. Though we don't really celebrate Thanksgiving because we're British and all, we have enough American Interlopers in our family that we host the dinner. Which I suppose means we do celebrate the holiday really, doesn't it? I love that my mum makes it with all the British trimmings, roast potatoes, sage and onion stuffing, brussel sprouts, Bisto gravy and parsnips. I love the smell of the turkey, gently scenting the air with its meaty goodness.

I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say I love having my family around on Thanksgiving day. The thing is, Thanksgiving Day is chaos. I think it's supposed to be, that it's a tradition to have a nutty family gathering or something. Our gathering is truly nuts. There are four children who are five and under. I love these children. They're my nephews and nieces. Singularly, they're sweet (most of the time), nice children who are fun to play with. Collectively, they're a hurricane of energy and noise that suddenly stops hearing and comprehending the word "No". The house is too small for this hurricane. Add five small dogs that get excited by excitement to the mix and you have all the elements to a backdrop of absolute havoc.

I like Thanksgiving night. I like that sudden quiet lull that falls over the house as soon as my oldest brother and his family leaves. Sometimes my oldest brother stays until almost midnight. I usually wait up. There's something about that inevitable lull that I need.

This is not to say I don't love my family because I do, very much. I love having them around. It's just something about Thanksgiving that is this huge crazy blur of activity in my mind. It gets in the way of the food.

But that's a week away. At the moment, the weekend lies ahead and I'm looking forward to that. I think it's mostly because of sleep. I like it when I can stay in bed and not have to get up for work. Then again, that's sort of a given for everyone, isn't it? The only thing better is when it's rainy because the beat of the raindrops on the windowpane and the howl of the wind is the best thing in the world to listen to when you're you're lying in bed and you don't have to get up.

I don't think it's supposed to rain this weekend. It was supposed to snow but the forecast has changed. Which is probably good for you because then I'd probably have to wax poetical about snow in at least one more blog.

My goal for the weekend is to email a query letter to at least 10-15 agents. Again. I'd love to say "This is it, this is the one!" but, frankly, I'm also rather jaded. I've done this before. Granted, it was with another book but I've still done it before. The nice thing about email submissions is there's no postage required and there's no delay in getting the letter to the reader. The bad news is that rejections also come more quickly. I've had rejections less than ten minutes after sending the email. I'm trying to thicken my skin, to not take rejection so personally but, well, frankly, that part is hard. When you put a little bit of your heart and soul into a book, it's really hard to condense it into the perfect query letter. It's also tough to read contradicting advice from agents: One says the query letter is everything, another says that he'd rather effort went into editing the novel rather than be spent on crafting a great letter. It's disheartening. What's even more disheartening is when the rejection letter has a spelling/typo in it. That's happened a couple of times, believe it or not. That does not make things easier.

However, I will try and continue to try though I sometimes hear a little voice telling me to give up. I can't listen to that voice, no matter how loud it gets because, at the end of the day, I love writing and that's ultimately why I do it. Sometimes it's hard to remember that but, fortunately, I've got good people around to remind me.

So, on this Friday morning, I shall look forward to the thought of sleeping late tomorrow, of the hope of snow and of the lazy, crazy day that will Thanksgiving next week. I shall put a little piece of my heart in that query letter and hope that it resonates for someone out there. And, if not, I will keep trying. Wish me luck.

Happy Friday.

A Snowy Monday Morning

Once more, it's a Monday. In the true spirit of a Monday morning, I was going to be grumpy. I had every intention of being grumpy because, honestly, it really doesn't take much effort and, on some days at least, I'm rather good at being grumpy.

Except, there are a few reasons for me not to be grumpy. For example, my clock radio woke me up with Green Day's "American Idiot." This may not sound like much but my regular radio station plays very little Green Day, favourite the more generic and boring Midwest rock like Hinder and Seether and a lot of other '-er' bands.

(Side note: How come we seethe but we do not hinde? I mean, we hinder something but we don't seether in silent fury, we seeth. Anyone else find that the English Language is somewhat inconsistant?)

Anyway, so hearing Green Day was a nice start to my day. Granted, it didn't mean that I didn't hit the snooze button after the song was done but it was still a pleasant surprise.

Then, I went down to defrost my car only to discover that it was snowing! Now, apparently, I'm considered odd because I like snow. But I adore it. I've mentioned that before but I'll mention it again. I got to drive to work and enjoy the snow, wet enough to melt as it hit the ground but also falling in big, fluffy snowflakes. I'm like a five-year-old when it snows. I like to tilt my head back, and let the snow land on my nose and eyelashes. These are a few of my favourite things.

Yes, there was a silent snicker at the end of the last line.

So, at the moment, the snow is gently cascading down. It's not supposed to settle which is good because I haven't been a good Midwesterner yet and bought winter shoes. This might be a problem. I wear skate shoes like Vans and Airwalk. These are not good on snow. I own boots but while looking cool, the 3 inch heel does not go well with ice. At the moment, I'm wearing boots with heels. i think a trip to J.C. Penney or some other store that sells practical shoes is in my near future.

I also found out a coworker had a baby yesterday. He was very premature but he's doing well as is the mother. This is very good news.

So, it's hard to be grumpy today though I have a couple of reasons. I was driving through Indiana en route from my parents and got a speeding ticket. I was not a happy Monkeypants. I was going 58 in a 45 mph zone. The thing is as I accelerated to 58, I passed the 55 mph zone so I think it's questionable. Also, I know police have a job to do and, technically, I was speeding but I was going 13 mph over the limit and it was literally JUST as I was moving between posted signs. I haven't had a ticket in over ten years. I can't help but think, wow, seriously, Mr. Policeman, don't you have anything better to do?

When I was in L.A., I spent six weeks with a friend in a civilian's police academy. We got to hear from the L.A. Sheriff's department on various subjects, tour a jail and go on a ride-along. We got to learn a lot about why police have to be the way they are. It did make me see the other side of the story, so to speak. I got to watch what the police have to deal with and how much paperwork it entails. It changed my perception of them because I realized that a lot of their attitude is a self-preservation technique. At least in L.A.

In Indiana, I'm not so sure. The policeman was polite but he wasn't nice. He lectured me on not having local plates. I told him it was a rental because I had recently been rear-ended. I admit, I was hoping for a little sympathy. Instead, I got a ticket which is going to cost me $130. Yay, me.

I know, I know, that's what I get for speeding but honestly speaking, for the most part, I tend to be a very tame driver. I don't speed more than 10 miles per hour normally. Yesterday, i was on autopilot. I accelerated too early. And now I have to pay. Never mind that the holidays are approaching and never mind that the economy blows at the moment. I still have to pay because I made a mistake.

And, to put the icing on the cake, when I got home, I checked my email and found a rejection. I had forgotten about that submission so the rejection was a nice smack on the head to tell me, hey, look, loser, we don't want your story. In not so many words, naturally. It means that, once again, I must plod onwards, ever forward and hope that someday people actually want to read my stories and novels and, when they do, they don't say, 'not for us' or 'not right for us at this time' but they say "we'd love to publish your work" or "I'd love to represent you." That's my dream and it never hurts to dream, right?

So, these are the reason I was going to be grumpy. Except, it's not happening because there are enough reasons not to be grumpy today as well. Yes, it's a Monday, yes, the weekend is still five days away but it doesn't mean I have to be in a bad mood. After all, it's snowing, my coworker and baby are healthy and I also got a phone call from one of my oldest childhood friends from England last night which was absolutely awesome. It's amazing how much people change but stay the same, isn't it?

Thus, I'm going to attempt to be positive. I'll try to take pleasure in the little things. Like the fact that office coffee doesn't taste quite so vile today. Like the fact that Robert Downey, Jr. was on the cover on Entertainment Weekly. And the fact that it's supposed to snow through Wednesday, scattered showers that will land quickly, melt quickly but make the world beautiful while it falls. Sometimes it's the little things that are the best.

Happy Monday, everyone.

Rejection is not pretty...

This isn't going to be another post about Breaking Dawn. Sometimes, I just need a pick-me-up and spewing venom about BD is very good for that.

Then again, at the moment, I might need a pick me up. I got rejected again last night. The thing is, it's for a story that I know is good. I don't like to toot my own horn and say I'm a good writer and that everything I write is good. It's not. I've written some real crap in my time. I still write real crap. Quite often, actually. But sometimes, when I write something, it just clicks. I've given it to a few people to read, people who aren't likely to tell me it's good if it sucks and I've had nothing but praise and good feedback on this story.

And yet....rejected again.

It's times like this that I hate being a writer. I've been rejected a lot now. I've heard quite a few stories about famous writers and how many times they were rejected. I know that. I get that. I admire that. But it doesn't take away from the fact that rejection sucks and that, at the moment, I am being rejected. I know that all this rejection will make a success seems sweeter because I had to earn it. I write novels, mostly. I've tried to get a couple of them to agents and publishers but I haven't had any luck. I'm unpublished so far and this makes agents and publishers nervous. I don't think many of them like new writers with no credits, it's too much of a gamble. So I took the short story route. It's not my favourite format because I like to sink my teeth into a story, to let the characters unfold at their own pace- short stories don't allow for that quite so much. But I can and do write short stories and I write them about whatever I want. I tend to like stories that are....stories. I like something to happen, not for it to be a five-page musing about how barren the landscape is. There are a lot of those landscape stories being published by the literary magazines. There are also lots of stories about bad parents, bad events, sad histories. I don't like to write about those. I like to make stuff up. There's nothing I like better than a good piece of fiction. I don't necessary like all of the genres; while I like a bit of Harry Potter or Raymond Feist type fantasy, I get awfully bored with too much spec fiction. I like a bit of well-written Chick-Lit but not the over-sexed, Bridget-Jones imitations that have flooded the market. I like a good vampire story but ever since Joss Whedon gave us "Buffy", everything else tends to pale in comparison.

But when it comes down to it, the writers I love most are the ones who have succeeded against the odds, writers who defy literature and actually entertain me. When i look at my favourites: J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King (especially in his earlier days) and Orson Scott Card, i realize that none of them writes about the landscape or waffles on about the beauty of an endless summer night. Instead, they tell me a story; they don't trip up over word choice and, because of it, I think they're better writers. Neil Gaiman particularly can be very poetic and lyrical but I don't think he actually tries, I think it just happens because of the nature of his storytelling.

And that's the kind of writer I want to be. I want to be the sort of writer who has fans who get irritated if I don't publish a new novel when they expect it. I don't want to win a Pulitzer prize. I just want people to enjoy my stuff.

So maybe I should lay off Breaking Dawn for a while. Because when it comes down to it, Stephanie Meyer is that kind of writer too. She has fans and WOW, does she have fans. I've met them. They terrify me. But at least she has them. And though I don't care for her storytelling nor her writing, I admire that she is where she is and, above all, she gets young people to read.

And she's not getting rejected. I am. And maybe it's wrong of me to pick on her so much when it could all be construed as sour grapes on my part. Maybe I am jealous that she has the success she has because I'm tired of being rejected. I know rejection is part of the uphill climb and that when I'm at the top looking down, it'll all seem so trivial but for now, every step I take is thwarted and I sometimes feel like turning around and going back to the bottom of the hill and finding something easier to do.

But the climb is kind of fun and the obstacles of rejection just make it a little more interesting, I suppose.

If only they didn't sting so much.